Learning social skills next target for AI

Siri and Google Assistant may be able to schedule meetings on request, but so far they don't have the social understanding to independently prioritise the appointments. According to researchers based in China, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is smart, but it is stunted by a lack of social skills.

"Artificial intelligence has changed our society and our daily life," first author Lifeng Fan, from Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) said.

"What is the next important challenge for AI in the future? We argue that Artificial Social Intelligence (ASI) is the next big frontier," Fan said.

In a paper, published in the CAAI Artificial Intelligence Research, the team explained that ASI comprises multiple siloed subfields, including social perception, theory of Mind - the understanding that others think from their own point of view -and social interaction.

By using cognitive science and computational modelling to identify the gap between AI systems and human social intelligence, as well as current issues and future directions, Fan said the field will be better equipped to advance.

"ASI is distinct and challenging compared to our physical understanding of the work; it is highly context-dependent," Fan said.

"Here, context could be as large as culture and common sense or as little as two friends' shared experience. This unique challenge prohibits standard algorithms from tackling ASI problems in real-world environments, which are frequently complex, ambiguous, dynamic, stochastic, partially observable and multi-agent."

Fan said that ASI requires the ability to interpret latent social cues, such as eye-rolling or yawning, to understand other agents' mental states, such as belief and intent, and to cooperate in a shared task.